No particle physicist received a phone call from Stockholm today. There had been some expectations for an award honoring the Higgs discovery. Well, it was maybe naive but not completely unrealistic to think that the Nobel committee might want to reestablish some connection with the original Nobel's will (which, anecdotally, awarded prizes for discoveries made during the preceding year). To ease my disappointment, let me write about a purely probabilistic but potentially gruesome aspect of today's decision. Warning: the discussion below is a really bad taste; don't even start reading unless Borat is among your favorite movies!
Peter Higgs is 83, and François Englert is almost 80. Taking the US data on lifetime expectancy as the reference, they have respectively 9% and 6% probability to pass away within a year from now. Thus, the probability of at least one of them being gone by the time of the next announcement is approximately 14%! To give an everyday analogy, it's only a tad safer than playing Russian Roulette with 1 bullet in a 6-shot colt revolver. The probability grows to stunning 27% if one includes Philip Anderson among the potential recipients (nearly 89, 15%). Obviously, the probability curve is steeply rising as a function of t, and approaches 100% for the typical Nobel recognition time lag.
Well, the Nobel for the Higgs discovery will be awarded sooner or later. Even if one of the crucial actors does not make it, the prestige of the physics Nobel prize won't be hurt too much (it has survived far more serious embarrassments). But, that would be just sad and unjust, even more so than the Cabibbo story. So why not make it rather sooner than later?
Here's is more on the dangers of playing Russian Roulette: